The Art of Posing

It took me quite a while to master the art of posing for pictures. In my awkward years, I had a habit of lifting my head up and back, creating an unsightly double chin that occupied the width of my chubby face. When I was old enough to realize that this was an issue that only tubby people dealt with, I started to change my picture style. Instead of lifting my head up, I decided to point my chin down. For some counter-intuitive reason, putting my chin down eliminated the second chin. I also realized that my face had to be straight-on to the camera lens, lest I see the remnants of a double chin on the side. These early strategies have shaped how I pose for pictures—to this day, I still try my best to face the camera dead-on, keep my chin slightly tilted down, and all the while smile as if I look like this all the time.

Face it. Everyone wants to look good in pictures. You want to look skinner than you do in real life, you want to look prettier than you do in real life, and you want to look like you’re not even trying to look skinner or prettier—that it comes naturally.

After perusing my Facebook friends (“perusing,” in this case, is a euphemism for “creeping”), I have come to some very specific conclusions of how, exactly, people achieve this feat of looking their best, and have compiled a list of the most common poses that boys and girls strike before the camera flash. (I should admit right now that I, too, am guilty of using all of these strategies. And they work!)

Ladies, your pose in a photo can make or break the possibility of a new profile pic. Here are the things a girl must do to look good.

1. Hand on the waist. This is important, for it not only emphasizes the smallest part of your torso, but it also creates a slimmer, toned arm. Don’t you hate when the fat at the armpit crease wrinkles up, giving the appearance of untoned, jiggly flesh? With the arm in a bent position, that problem is eliminated. Be careful, though—this pose can look stilted and unnatural, especially if another girl is doing the same thing. In that case, bringing your arm just SLIGHTLY back but still relaxed and down will do the trick. And don’t forget the shoulder pop! I’ve found that raising my shoulder up and bringing it out makes it look bonier, and gives the appearance of a thinner overall body.

2. Shift your weight entirely to the side of your bent arm. Again, this emphasizes the small waist on which your hand is resting, and gives nicer curves of the hips—an overall good position to emphasize proportional curves. Some girls make the mistake of shifting their weight to the OPPOSITE side, which looks awkward and completely negates the small-waist illusion.

3. Bend one knee and bring it in toward the other knee. For some reason, this popular fad has been deemed cute.

4. Tilt your head—BUT NOT TOO MUCH. You don’t want to look like you have strabismus; you want to indicate that you’re happy, carefree, and not at all worrying about whether or not you’ll have to untag this picture later.

5. Suck in. This should be pretty self-explanatory. However, take caution that sucking in your belly automatically causes most girls’ shoulders to rise up (okay with the one that you’re already raising; not okay for the other). Learn to isolate only the abdominal muscles when sucking in, and you’re golden. I have practiced in front of a mirror, and now bringing in my belly comes completely naturally to me.

I haven’t completely mastered the art of a guy’s pose—all I have been able to conclude is that, for the most part, every single guy wants to look bigger than he actually is. From checking out multiple male Facebook friends’ pictures, I have decided upon the top 3 things guys do for pictures.
1. Stick out their chests.
2. Pull back their arms to create the illusion that their pecs are bigger.
3. Flex. Some guys are incredibly talented at flexing without giving away the secret in their faces; others, not so much.

The major discrepancy I have seen between girls and boys is the angle at which the picture is taken. A boy absolutely LOVES their pictures being taken from below—it makes him appear taller and bigger, and I’ve noticed that the double chin issue of doing this is trivial and irrelevant.

This seems totally unfair to me, as I absolutely detest pictures of me taken from below. After constant reminders to the photographers to “take the picture from above,” my friends have dubbed me Queen of Above Angles. I know it’s annoying, but I say, do what you gotta do to look good! And I know I’m not alone in this case—Facebook is ridden with photos of girls’ faces holding the cameras up, pointing down at their pointy chins and high cheek bones (facial features that suddenly appear in these pictures, yet that these girls oddly seem to lack in the real world). But do I judge them?

Not at all.

hasta la vista, baby!

Finally, after 6 semesters (including two summer sessions), I am finally getting ready to move OUT of the residence halls and into an apartment! Despite some trepidation I have about living in an apartment (I have to cook MY OWN FOOD? And wash my own dishes?!), ultimately, I have concluded that apartment life will be much cooler, more exciting, and just overall more awesome than living in the dorms. Here are the top 15 reasons why I can’t wait to say adieu to dorm life FOREVER!

1. No more flip flops in the shower.

2. No more weekly emails from a coordinator about how to serve the community.

3. Nobody will be swiping into the building to see if the doors still work—yes, auxiliary police, they still work.

4. The bathroom will never be “Closed For Cleaning” at the most inconvenient times possible.

5. No more screaming kids at 10:00 when I’m trying to study—or SLEEP.

6. So long, fire drills!

7. I won’t have to wait in line for food—and I can eat whenever I want, whatever I want (to the extent of my culinary expertise, of course…good thing I love pasta and grilled cheese.)

8. I can prop the door open for as long as I want without an alarm going off that alerts all of State College that I violated some dorm rule.

9. No more roommate agreement and check-out forms

10. My mail will come to the same building I’m living in.

11. I won’t be able to succumb to the daily temptations of Creamery ice cream and warm, melty chocolate-chip cookies in the dining halls that continually sabotage my ever-existent diet.

12. I can keep my door unlocked when I leave my bedroom to eat.

13. I can sing in the shower (without any strangers hearing, anyway…)

14. I don’t have to use ugly bed risers and bendable desk lamps that look like they belong in “Back to the Future.”

15. I will know everyone who will be sitting on our toilet—and know that they're all clean.